Vestiges of Economy: Polk Street Homelessness

Text by Joey Plaster. Copyright (©) by C. Joey Plaster, 2009. All rights reserved.

Deeth and Ian. Photo by Gabriela Hasbun.

The vestiges of the drug/sex work economy in 2008 include street youth who have aged into the general homeless population. In 2008, Reverend Megan M. Rohrer estimated that “98 percent” of the homeless who live in the Polk Gulch and are served by her organization, The Welcome Ministry, have been a part of the Polk Street sex work economy.

This segment of the Polk Street homeless population stems in part from the collapse of the area’s community-based economic and social safety nets in the 1990s, combined with the absence of a viable alternative from the city, the neighborhood, or the city’s gay political establishment. And like the Market Street beautification efforts of the 1970s, these individuals now perceive themselves to be targets of “cleanup” efforts – part of a process that can be understood as part of a shift from one dominant economic bloc to another.

“It’s changing, the way the neighborhood wants it to change,” said Deeth, a thirty-year old who came to the street as a teenager and now sleeps in a squat off the street. “There’s a lot of rich people coming up here, a lot of condominiums going up. They want to get all the street people out.”

When she came to the street as a teenager, Deeth befriended the community of hustlers and sold drugs for a living. “I just got stuck here,” she said. “Because I got to knowing all the hustlers and as I got older, they still kept me in their hearts and stuff and in their minds they always thought about me. So every time I came up here I had some kinds of means of support. I was still selling drugs and using drugs and I didn’t really have to worry about too much.”

She slept in the alleyways with other youth, the entire group protected by older drug dealers, but now feels that it is unsafe to sleep on the streets: the “family” she knew has dissipated, sex work has moved to the internet, and the evaporation of the street economy led to further division and competition. “There’s a lot of greed out here right now,” she said. “I guess it’s since the economy has gone down so much, so there’s not as much money to throw around…for drugs, for panhandlers, for anything.”

Since 2004, many of the homeless have found housing in a nearby SRO hotels through the Homeless Outreach Team, instituted as part the City’s Care Not Cash program — part of a dramatic move indoors for the homeless in the area. Most of this segment of the homeless population on Polk Street is addicted to methamphetamine and heroin, and many also suffer from mental health issues.

The current Polk Street of upscale condominiums, wine bars, and restaurants, coexisting with homeless shelters, street prostitution, and low-income single room occupancy apartments reflects national trends: a 2006 report by the Brookings Institution found that only 23 percent of central city neighborhoods in twelve large metropolitan U.S. areas were middle income in 2000, down from 45 percent in 1970. The study defined middle income as areas where families earn 80 to 120 percent of the local median income.

Personal histories from stakeholders who are living through and shaping changes in the area are presented in the section “Polk Street: Lives in Transition,” in an effort to better understand the state of the neighborhood in 2008 and the actions and attitudes of a diverse array of Polk Street denizens.

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